If the opposition does something, you as a fan almost always try to find something bad about it. If it's your choice of video game manufacturer that does something, you as a fan almost always try to justify it. It goes either way, and we as fans are never objective. So I would say they got of as easily as MS did with their fans and paid online.

Achievement for who, Sony? (Concering the profit) Obviously. For Gamers? Possibly. You could argue that quality of online gaming on PS gets better because of it, and in response XB's infrastructure must strengthen in response. As for getting away with, well, that is a strange statement. In order to have taken significant flak for it, they did take some mind you, they would have to have actively tried to overshadow the backlash Microsoft created for themselves.

Not to mention, XBL was lucky enough to have desensitize millions into paying for online before it even became an issue because someone offered it for free, Sony's PS3. Then it became a matter of quality, which PSN as a new service vs an established veteran would be hardpressed to beat. Only with the added value of PS+ could Sony compete which in turn forced XB to adapt accordingly.

So in that respect, "getting away with it" as achievement or trophy, isn't really such, it was basically free.

Oh, that makes sense. I don't it's all that great, haha. I mean, the goods attached to them have sparked some controversy and garnered unfavorable comments from the general gaming crowd. Unless we're all just being sarcastic, right..? o:

Especially since they aren't even giving us dedicated servers for it.

I play multiplayer games on my computer, and uh. There are no subscriptions required for my games :o

Trololol #PCMasterRace

As a PC/Nintendo gamer, I never liked what Microsoft did, and I don't like what Sony is doing. If Nintendo starts a similar thing, I won't subscribe to it.

Its amazing though how quickly everyone got onboard with and even loved paid online. That wasnt the general consensus going around before this happened. Still, since it doesn't affect me, I can't really say much about it. If you guys like it, then thats great. Its your own money, spend it however you want :)

The worst part about it is that as soon as PS+ became mandatory, the free games dropped MASSIVELY in quality compared to when it was optional. And I'm not talking about the PS4 games on offer, the PS3 and Vita games were awful as well. Though admittedly they kind of ran out of decent Vita games to give out at some point.

I hope whoever is still keeping that shit locked hangs himself.

No joke just legit hatred

The competition was doing it as well, so by doing it it simply became the accepted standard, plus, PS+ offers some nice rewards for it.

As someone who has invested in ps+ I already got my money worth back after 1 months subscription so great service for me^^

PS+ needs to support PS3, Vita and PS4, while XBL only needs to support 360 and X1. It obviously needs more games than XBL to be comparable. On top of that Sony is getting very lazy with big releases on PS+ lately. PS4 only got like one retail game (MGS V Ground Zeroes) in 2015, while X1 got Tomb Raider Definitive Edition, Thief, Assassin's Creed IV, Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes & Rayman Legends. So I definitely can't agree with "big games come out much later than on PS+".

Sony rather includes more small games (a few good ones, no doubt) that are cross-play with all of their platforms than few big releases that are PS4 only.